Council Creates Police Monitor, But Giuliani Plans to Ignore Vote

By JONATHAN P. HICKS

Published: January 20, 1995

Defying Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, the City Council voted yesterday to create an independent agency to monitor the police and guard against corruption. But Mr. Giuliani said he would ignore the vote, forcing the Council to take him to court to establish the agency.

The Mayor had vetoed an earlier Council vote on the agency, and has long said that he opposed it because it would have too much power, duplicating the work of district attorneys. He said yesterday that the Council was seeking to create its own law-enforcement agency, because the selection process it had set up would give it a role in appointing members to the agency's five-member governing board.

That appointment process, he said, would violate the separation of municipal powers.

The Mayor and the Council have already tangled in court over budget issues, and although Council Speaker Peter F. Vallone said yesterday he would try to reach an agreement with Mr. Giuliani, he added that he was prepared to go to court, if necessary.

Several Council members said they were deeply troubled by the possibility that the Mayor would ignore the Council's vote. "The Mayor would be saying that the law applies to everyone except to him and I don't think he can afford to adopt that posture," said Councilwoman Mary Pinkett.

Yesterday's 41-to-8 vote to create the monitoring board represented the third time the Council has overridden a veto since Mr. Giuliani became Mayor a year ago. The Republican Mayor has vetoed five bills passed by the Democratic majority Council.

The Council vote would establish the first outside agency with sweeping powers to investigate police corruption. The agency, which is to begin operating in six months, comes in response to more than 30 arrests for police corruption last year, and findings by the Mollen Commission that the Police Department had failed to police its own.

The vote came in a flurry of action by the Council yesterday, including another vote that put it at odds with the Mayor. That vote would delay by three months a plan to dismantle the city's 16,300 fire-alarm boxes. Mr. Giuliani wants to remove the boxes, saying they are too expensive and result in many false alarms.

But the Council has maintained that it needs to know more about how the Mayor plans to replace the boxes by improving emergency telephone service and installing 400 cellular telephones in less populated areas of the city. That legislation passed by a vote of 47-to-2.

Although the Mayor just last week used an address before the Council to offer a new spirit of cooperation, the vote on the police agency and the alarm boxes underscored the continuing rancor between the two.

Mr. Giuliani said that he would recognize the legality of the Council's vote to create a police monitoring agency only if it would "get an amendment to the Charter to change the balance of power."

He compared the Council's creating the agency with it setting up an agency to investigate narcotics trafficking. "It would be a terrible mistake for a Mayor to allow a legislature to get so far off reach from what is a proper legislative function," he said.

The Mayor could still seek to derail the agency by delaying his own appointments to it, or by not including it in his budget for the next fiscal year.

The agency is to be governed by a five-member board, with two members appointed by the Mayor, two by the Council and a chairman to be selected jointly. It would be independent of the Police Department and would have the power to subpoena witnesses. It is to employ about a dozen staff members, most of them investigators, as well as an executive director and a legal counsel.

The agency would audit the Police Department's system of investigating and preventing corruption, as well as help it devise a strategy for eliminating police wrongdoing. It would also undertake independent corruption investigations, but any finding of criminal activity by officers would be conveyed to the Police Commissioner and prosecutors.

Richard M. Weinberg, the chief attorney for the Council, disputed the Mayor's contention that having the Council appoint members to the board would violate the Mayor's authority, saying the Council already appoints members to executive agencies, like the Civilian Complaint Review Board and the Campaign Finance Board.

But district attorneys have joined with the Mayor in opposing the agency. "I think it's a waste of money," said William L. Murphy, the Staten Island District Attorney. "We are prepared to investigate and prosecute these matters. We have been asking for resources for years. I view this as a tremendous potential interference with the in-place and much-overloaded criminal justice system."

Mr. Vallone, said the law establishes mechanisms to prevent the agency from conducting investigations that would interfere with law-enforcement offices. But Mr. Murphy mocked those mechanisms, saying they would lead to more bureaucracy.

"I suppose somebody will suggest meetings," Mr. Murphy said. "And the last thing I need is more meetings."

The Council also voted yesterday to restrict the number of food vendors on city streets by limiting to one the number of sidewalk carts that any one person can own. The legislation would also create a panel of representatives from city agencies and the Council to review restrictions on where vendors can operate and consider new ones.

The Mayor is expected to sign the legislation, which closely followed a proposal that he introduced last fall, responding to complaints of merchants and businesses that some food vendors were operating illegally, particularly on the congested streets of Midtown Manhattan.

While the provision restricts food carts from operating on about 60 streets around the city, its most sweeping provision is its limit on the number of vending licenses a person can hold. According to the Council, nearly a third of the 3,000 permits are held by eight companies, who would not be able to renew the licenses they now have.